adaptation
Hanna Weibye
The original idea for the subtitle of this show, first made in 2000 and last seen at Sadler's Wells in 2007, was apparently "An Auto-Erotic Thriller". Yes, groan. But "erotic thriller" is a much straighter description of The Car Man than its actual, rather coy, subtitle, "Bizet's Carmen Reimagined". This is a nail-biting ride, and certainly not suitable for kids.The plot is based loosely on The Postman Always Rings Twice - wife and lover murder husband somewhat inefficiently, there is a wrongful conviction but eventually (twisted) poetic justice. Bourne adds a tragic misfit and a bisexual Read more ...
David Nice
Kafka and Jones, the names above this little shop of horrors, would be a marriage made in off-kilter theatreland had the Czech genius written any plays. He didn’t, so Nick Gill has made a well-shaped drama out of the assembled fragments of which The Trial consists. It offers an exhaustive role for Rory Kinnear, never offstage for the unbroken two-hour duration, and lets director Richard Jones revert from the warm humanity he’s most recently been unable to resist in Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg and Puccini’s The Girl of the Golden West back to his favoured world of discomfort and Read more ...
Matt Wolf
So many plays and musicals are adapted from films (Bend it Like Beckham is up next) that it comes as something of a throwback to find a film that takes as its source an acclaimed musical play. The sheer fact that there is a movie of London Road is doubly extraordinary when one considers that the widely acclaimed theatre production from 2011 was anomalous even as a stage show, let alone transposed to the screen. A piece of verbatim theatre conceived very much without take-home numbers but scored to the jagged, often discordant music of the composer Adam Cork, London Road seemed to want to Read more ...
fisun.guner
If it’s about magic, and features sanitised cobbled streets and dark gothic interiors, then Harry Potter comparisons will no doubt be inevitable.And so it has been with this seven-part adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s hefty 2004 novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, directed by Toby Haynes. The comparison seems fitting, for though this is a mini-series that has the sumptuous look and high production values of a typically lavish BBC costume drama, everything else about it says children’s drama. Surely the BBC schedulers are wrong to put it out after the watershed? Even more than Harry Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
On my way to the Woolf Works opening last night, I made the mistake of reading The Waves, Virginia Woolf’s most experimental novel. It was a mistake because even the briefest immersion in Woolf’s prose was a thousand times more exhilarating than the 90 minutes of treacly sludge served up by Wayne McGregor and Max Richter in this, the choreographer’s much-hyped first full-length work for the Royal Ballet. It’s not really full-length, though: it’s three self-contained short pieces, each inspired by a novel – Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves, in that order – with the portentous in- Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Joss Whedon’s Avengers sequel loses much of the original’s exhilarating freshness. It begins in the middle, doesn’t really end, and regularly makes you wonder just how long the Marvel box-office bonanza can continue. The moment when its Cinema Universe’s exponentially growing complexity slams into entropic reverse, as happened to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original comic-book vision, is plainly visible on the horizon.The franchise’s triumph is that its army of highly skilled and humane artists such as Whedon have kept these witty, nimble blockbusters away from that black hole as long as they Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwright Simon Stephens has made a long journey. Starting off as a young in-yer-face writer, then pausing to mellow over slices of life, then winning awards with state-of-the-nation family dramas and teen plays, he has ended up by brilliantly adapting The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. And yet. Ever since his Three Kingdoms was staged here in 2012, in his heart has been the desire to be a Continental playwright – and Continental playwrights love to mess with, sorry deconstruct, the classics. So his latest, Carmen Disruption, is a free adaptation, billed as a re- Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s seminal novel has inspired a raft of commemorative works, from Damon Albarn and Moira Buffini’s musical Wonder.land to Holland Park opera and Glastonbury’s surrealist haven; Disney’s film sequel arrives next year. Les Enfants Terribles’ contribution takes a literal trip down the rabbit hole, guiding audiences into the depths of Waterloo Vaults.“Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end,” counselled the King of Hearts, so Anthony Spargo’s adaptation commences with Carroll’s dusty treasure trove of a study. From there, our paths diverge Read more ...
Matthew Wright
“Something strident and stirring – play to us now, please!” demands Martin Clunes’ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the piano-playing vicar’s wife, on apprehending that their conversation is being eavesdropped on. Sherlock Holmes himself could hardly have responded more adeptly to frustrate the eavesdropper, and as Conan Doyle’s pursuit of the intruder leads him to a sinister, candle-lit shrine containing the vicar’s daughter’s long-lost favourite doll, it’s clear that ITV has a new thriller both strident and stirring on its hands.The story is based on historical events surrounding George Edalji, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Wolf Hall divided viewers from the off. It mesmerised many and left a vocal minority cold, for whom apparently - mystifyingly - it has all been a bit dull. The dialogue was too elliptical, the politics tricksy and convoluted (who is this Holy Roman Emperor anyway?), there was a surfeit of men called Thomas and women stitching in bay windows and big dresses. And to cap it all director Peter Kosminsky, fetishising Mark Rylance’s inscrutable face, seemed to want every take to carry on into next week.In the end, the rewards for loyalty were rich, and never more than in the adaptation's final Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The broomsticks are back in the cupboard, wands are no longer at the ready, and no one is casting spells in cod Latin. JK Rowling’s first novel for adults has made its inevitable journey from page to screen. The first view of a picturesque Cotswolds village – a mannikin in erotic underwear provocatively on all fours in a shop window – says it succinctly: we’re not in Hogwarts any more.The setting of The Casual Vacancy is Pagford, a village in rural southern England where the haves and have-nots, the plummy toffs and the loamy yokels, co-exist cheek by jowl. That’s the way it always has been Read more ...
fisun.guner
As Shakespeare is to these native isles, so Pushkin is to Russia. And Eugene Onegin, Alexander Puskin’s enduring verse novel first published in serial form in 1825, is the most honoured and beloved of all Russian classics. Outside Russia, the story is, of course, most familiar to us through Tchaikovsky’s great opera. We also have John Cranko’s 1965 ballet, set to other music by Tchaikovsky, a production of which is currently selling out at the Royal Opera House. Now a rare spoken-word adaptation is setting the bar. Presented in two acts, and running at nearly three and a half hours, it Read more ...